Post-War Identification

by Kolind, Torsten

• ISBN13: 9788779343139
• ISBN10: 8779343139
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-11-12
• Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Summary

Post-war identification is a unique ethnographic study of the remarking of post-war life in a small ethnically mixed town in Bosnia Herzegovina. During the war in the 1990s the local Muslim population was expelled, but today has returned to live alongside former enemies. These people are trying to piece together a life from broken fragments that consist of war-related traumas, nationalist propaganda, ruined economies, disappointment, and memories of pre-war life. In this shattered world Torsten Kolind identifies an everyday based, anti-nationalistic counterdiscourse strongly rooted in pre-war life. This resistance is seldom outspoken, but consists rather of a steady insistence on not using ethnic or national categories in identifying oneself and/or others. In a world of despair, the Muslim everyday counter-discourse gives hope for future coexistence, and points to the intriguing fact that reconcilement often develops from the bottom up, rather than in the political corridors of power. Torsten Kolind's focus on everyday resistance is a highly relevant contribution to contemporary anthropological discussions of the relation between discourse, power, nationalism, and violence. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. 8
List of abbreviations	p. 11
Acknowledgements	p. 13
Framing the Question
Prologue: Chronology of the war	p. 17
The war in Herzegovina
The war in Stolac
The return
The public sphere in Stolac
Introduction	p. 29
The structure of the book
The field
Anthropological perspectives on war and war-related violence	p. 37
Instrumentality/structure
Expression
Experience/narrative
Relevance to my study
The unmaking of the world	p. 49
The destruction of the everyday world
The destruction of stories
The destruction of communication
The all-pervasive feeling of loss
Remaking, identification, and counterdiscourse	p. 75
Remaking
Discourse
Resistance
Who Are They, the Ones Who Did This to Us?
Introduction to part II	p. 97
Yugoslav nationalism	p. 99
The First Yugoslavia
The Second World War
The Tito era
After Tito: nationalism explodes
Politika	p. 123
Politika as a moral category
Politika as resistance
Politika as externalisation of the ungraspable
Politika as a way of analysing
Posteni ljudi - decency rather than ethnicity	p. 135
Decency and moral disapproval
Decency and the legitimisation of interethnic interaction
Decency and Muslim identity
Nekultura - culture rather than ethnicity	p. 149
The uncultured Other
'The revenge of the countryside'
Complexity in ethnic categorisation as part of the counterdiscourse	p. 159
Croats from central Bosnia
Croats from the countryside
Croats from Stolac
Croats from Croatia
Ethnic denunciations
'Good Croats'
Summary of Part II	p. 183
Who Are We, Since This Was Done to Us?
Introduction to part III	p. 187
The rise of Muslim national identity in Bosnia Herzegovina	p. 189
The introduction of Islam
Austro-Hungarian rule and the emergence of a politicised ethnoreligious Muslim identity
The communist regime and the secularisation of Muslim identity
The SDA and the emergence of Muslim nationalism in the post-Tito period
The war - Muslim nationalism escalates
Bosnian Muslim identity in everyday practice	p. 207
Pre-war Muslim identity in everyday life
The influence of war on Muslim everyday identity
The national identity that failed	p. 217
National identity
Religious identity
Localistic identifications	p. 233
The Stolac spirit
The struggle for local identity
Ideal of tolerance and coexistence	p. 245
The trouble-free past: a space uncontaminated by the war
The past as a political comment on the present
Tolerance and coexistence as sources of identity
The merging of tolerance and Muslim identity
The Balkans - Europe	p. 263
The discursive construction of the Balkans - Europe
Balkan identifications in Stolac
European identifications in Stolac
The role of the victim	p. 285
The conspiracy
Criticism and decency - mosques and churches
Generational lopsidedness
Summary of Part III	p. 297
Conclusion	p. 299
Bibliography	p. 305
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